Still need to catch up on the last two but the first four eps have been surprisingly good, Knock Knock had a nice twist in the tail. Think overall it's because Moffat has been dialling back the Moffatness a bit, even though it's pretty obvious that it's going to be Simm's Master in the vault I much prefer having that as the arc's mystery rather than all the hybrid eton mess from last series. Still calling some shenanigans to do with Bill's mum though.

Edit-
All caught up, least I was half right about the box. Another two good episodes, like that they've got an actual, tangible story thread running through multiple episodes for once, i.e not just "OMG hybrids!" or "Clara you're so mysterious and impossible" but something that's actually there and affects the story ep-by-ep. Get the feeling next week may be the first dip in quality, just a nagging feeling since I can't really think of any Moffat-era "global alien invasion!" episodes that I particularly like. Bill's growing on me though, and I'm definitely going to miss Capaldi when he's gone.

Ghost wrote:and since when has "being dumb" been a sin on the internet?

quite a decent episode i thought looks like next week is the old alternate timeline plot

if there's anything to those doctor regenerating mid series rumours it'll probably happen next week and then be reversed when time is put back to normal

Or maybe

the result of putting everything back to normal will be him getting kerboomed in the lab.
but i guess at least bill will learn her lesson so thats nice

anyway I just came here to rant about moffat i guess

first of all when dr tucker revealed IM BLIND at the end of whatever episode it gave me a really sensible chuckle becuase it reminded me of All My Circuits's timeless use of the classic "I have... AMNESIA" plot twist and I think it's really good.

moving on, in extremis was one of the episodes i enjoyed the most out of the news series so i think i was probably a bit drunk but whatever. i thought the concept of the suicide text was interesting and it actually made good use of the dr being blind AND finally a moment of retribution for those stupid glasses. but that was back when i didn't realise it was a moffat 2 parter... wait THREE parter so they were more innocent times. but i was happy to accept the whole "it was a all a dream / simulation / GTA6" get-out on the basis that it was used to show the doctor FAILING rather than storming to victory like usual so it kinda had a different feel. I know he did sort of win by sending that email (such a genius) but there was a sense in which he was cornered by the situation (which turned out to not be a situation because it wasn't real) also how good would it be if the real president killed himself? haha im just joking haha

the series up until now had managed to keep itself relatively low key. one of my main criticisms of nuhu is that there's always an escalation in the stakes so that before you know it you go from trying to help find a missing person to saving a city to saving the world to saving the universe to saving the very fabric of reality itself. having a new companion helped bring things back down to earth but it really just serves to highlight how unnecessary all this grandstanding is and how much of a poor subsititute it is for stories with actual characters and subplots and space for ideas other than "Armageddon is baaaad".

But whatever, this second part has all the hallmarks of a eton mess nuhu story. no characters with any kind of arc or independent value. i liked to see Brian from my parents are aliens, there was nothing wrong with that, but there's never any development of a side character like this, even if they appear in multiple episodes. I'd like to see them buck the trend but i think we all know how this is going to play out.

we also had the whole dr trying to help the poor misguided humans with his superior wisdom IF ONLY THOSE POOR HUMANS KNEW NOT TO GIVE UP THEIR FREEDOM but tbf to them they at least tried the whole not starting WWIII thing that's how you know they were giving it their level best. its stuff like this kind of simple minded plotting and character development that make it more of a kids show than a family show. kids shows can be excellent quality and great for everyone to watch, but they can also get away with being simple and crap because kids are dumb and dont know any better cos they haven't seen the wire.

i hope we at least get some interesting explanation as to what or hu the monks are and why they chose this ridiculously circuitous methods of taking over the world. and i forget her name but, you never know, that little scientist who was working with Brian is probably gonna be back so maybe we'll get something interesting with her. Or maybe she'll just turn out to be a pivotal plot point and nothing else, place your bets ladies and gentlemen

aye pretty naff alright. i actually quite liked the idea that the dr was pretending to work with the monks and the scene where bill thinks he has turned over to the dark side wasnt bad because you get to see the doctor from the perspective of his enemies and I gotta say peter capaldi on a gooseberry fool waterborne fortress with a private army makes for a pretty compelling super villain.

i mean obviously he wasn't really going to side with the monks. obviously. but I was prepared to enjoy it for what it was until whatever behind the scenes bargaining had been going on behind the scenes was revealed and we got an explanation. except that instead of doing that they ended it immediately with a joke and a terrible and pointless explanation.

all that MGS2 tanker mission subplot did was eat up time the writers could have spent fleshing out the new world they just created. but no, it's more important to follow bill around and FIND THE DOCTAR because that's always the most important thing in any story. there were a few promising scenes they could have built on: weirdly sexy fascist lady who arrests people; soldiers who are susceptible to changing sides at any moment (who do you trust? ) ; and maybe just show more of what living in the monkhouse was actually like for ordinary people and they could have showed some good as well as bad. haha sorry i shouldn't talk about subtlety in dr hu, even I dont have that much breath to waste.

so the next part the episode started well (if you ignore crashing the boat into that bridge) with an exchange with missy. Now the idea that the monk's contrived to place the life of their key to power under the protection of the doctor WOULD be a good plan. it's pretty clear that their plan isn't particularly good in general, but it was a nice dynamic to have because in that sense he WAS working for the monks ?? oh wait, no, they have a big psychic transmitter in their pyramid and we can just blow it up. again, that's obviously a bit too easy (i mean they had no way getting close to it in the early episodes so it kind of begs beleief that they got that far but w/e)

so the catch is that the doctor's plan to headbutt the alien technology into nonexistence doesn't work. but billy can because she remembers her mom. and then the monks just feck off. so that's a perfectly satisfactory conclusion. So it's pretty clear at this point that they just make up the plots as they go along. I mean it's one thing to care more about the ride than the destination but this one was a mess that set itself up for failure and succeeded completely.

it completely fails to develop any themes it introduces: let's think about the whole alt reality fascism is bad don't you know. the dr has overthrown his fair share of fascist alien overlords, but the stories work best when they paint a picture of the life the people suffer and make you invested in seeing the villains overturned. the old hu episodes were good at this because they didn't rely on everything being saw through the doctor's eyes. In this case we were relying on bill, but all she does is freakout and wait for the doctor to rescue her (through matt lucas) and only then can they go about rescuing everyone else. But now it's just become a rescue story.

Now what about sacrificing billy jean in order to save humanity? it all happens a bit too quickly to get any serious consideration. obviously the doctor is gonna try a few other things first, but what I was waiting for was that desperate moment where he deosn't know what the heck to do and missy in the background cackling and he actually seriously considers it. remember that in the last episode bill literally doomed humanity to save one person and the doctor gave her a right telling off? now we have a mirror situation and the perfect chance to test the morals of the doctor. or he could just flounder around "SHES DYING FOR NOTHING" oh, peter it's all for nothing. And rather than combining their psychic powers into a megazord or something bill just does it herself. like he doesn't even help. and it makes no sense that bilbo can do it but the doctor cant. whatever, it's the power of a mother's love so if you argue against that you're a monster.

it's just so sad to see nuhu try to do a classic "overthrow the fascist aliens" and gooseberry fool it up so badly it. It was such bread and butter premise in old who and they managed to find all sorts of ways to keep it interesting. This was just embarrassing. the only hope is that theyre gonna do something good with missy but watching that cringy crocodile tears scene doesn't give me hope. again, obviously she's not good - but since we're pretending for a while I hope they're actually building up to something and aren't just gonna make missy good until some certain convenient moment in the plot where goes "haha I am an evil I tricked u". haha is there really no hope?

I found the latest episode to be pretty boring. Bill being driven to shoot the doctor was super implausible/contrived. It's weird that they can go back to being hunky dory again when it's revealed he was just pretending. Thinking back on the regeneration thing, I wonder if Bill even knew the Doctor could regenerate? Don't recall him telling her about it. Just seemed like pure bait for the trailer.

Perhaps Missy will actually reform, but then something happens that causes her to revert to her previous incarnation and undo the development.

That something is probably going to be the previous Master showing her how fun it is being bad and roping her into whatever scheme he's got going on

Kind of meh over the last three episodes, Extremis was decent setup if flawed, Pyramid at the End of the World again set up an interesting premise but then was let down by them not doing much with it in Lie of the Land. Also dumb that the monks had the whole world under their thumb but didn't bother putting any guards outside the pyramid.

So basically just Moffat doing a Moffat again

Ghost wrote:and since when has "being dumb" been a sin on the internet?

Felt like classic Who, not just because of the classic villain, but the isolated setting and premise, although I wouldn't say it was good as the Ice Warrior on a submarine episode though. I haven't been liking the series so far much, but this one brought me back in. High hopes for the next episode.

agreed i liked that episode. not entirely sure what the point of cutting out matt lucas was (it doesn't make sense for tardis to just gooseberry fool off. maybe he had stage work, or did they really sacrifice a character just to set up a few spicy glances from missy ??) but aside from that I have praise. The whole "empire attitude is bad" thing wasn't too overcooked (a couple of cringy moments is ok at this point) and making it so that the enemy monsters are more than just savage killing machines certainly makes for a more interesting dynamic. I always like sci fi where the main villian isn't the alien. now the whole "YOU MUST RESPECT THEIR SPECIES" is far from new in dr hu (remember the conclusion to that episode about nanobots? that was ass). this was a pretty respectable incarnation of that idea. there were some shades of grey with the ice warriors; Friday was a true ally, but the whole "gun that squashes people into cubes" weapon was actually pretty disturbing if you think about it.

What I really liked about it was how yo ugot different perspectives from hoomans and ice warriors. OK so I guess the British empire sorts were used to trotting round the globe feeling superior and characters like Neville were a cheap shot at these colonial attitudes - but that wasn't where it ended. To the ice warriors the humans are primitive and stupid and this view of humans is (more than her reptilian form) what makes the ice queen a monster, albeit a civilized one. Having the tables turned like is what gives the characters a chance to develop. Meanwhile the doctor as frustrated peacebroker is a good role for him but, crucially, the breakthrough moment wasn't made by him, but by another character. That's something you need to have to give an episode credibility.

One thing that puzzles me is why the ice warriors didn't express any desire to go to earth. I mean, Friday was just there and it was fine. That seemed to me to be the main implicit threat of the ice queen so it would have been nice if it was addressed but whatever.

All in all a reminder that Moffat can write good episodes if he doesn't decide to dick the episode in one of the hundreds of thousands of ways he's been dicking episodes since he took over the show. Nice one

Another enjoyable episode. After a bit of a dip with the Monks trilogy, this was the series more-or-less back on form.

And while I do agree that the TARDIS randomly buggering off was a bit strange (and seems to be becoming a running element of new Ice Warrior stories), I think its absence may have helped the tension of the episode, and I'm not sure how much Nardole could really have contributed to the story, so I'm not too bothered by it.

<Kaeetayel> Go for a team entirely composed of Eeveelutions
<Princess> that's effort
<Princess> I need to buy the stones/go to rocks/make them happy/touch Eevee
<Kaeetayel> The last one doesn't sound too bad

not as strong as last week's but a reasonable effort by the usual standards. i think the problem was the monster since it was just a ravenous beast and it's not like we haven't all seen dragon tentacle rape before. but once again I'm glad that dr hu was in my life to remind me that empires do bad things. and good on all the soldiers and stuff for being so young the kids of today could learn a thing or two. STOP PLAYING NES AND GET A JOB. but yeah, if the story is just "run away from a monsta until we think of an ultra contrived plan to defeat it" then no awards will be won. The strength of this episode was that it had a good crop of characters, even if it didn't finish harvesting them.

free suggestion for improving the episode: there was a good moment when bill escaped the monster and first met the roman soldiers. It was a "out of the frying pan...." moment where it seemed like she had every reason to be just as terrified of a bunch of desperate soldiers as she did a hungry squidragon. furthemore, the confined setting of the cave with is a natural setting for a big spook fest. a story in which bill had to negotiate these two perils without the doctor could have been really good. but this is new who and nothing happens without the doctor so it's pretty quickly established that the soldiers are total bros and about 90% of the tension just dissipates. meanwhile the doctor is just doing his sherlock detective work and hectoring people. my cruel nature means that I find scenes in which the doctor is talking down people just delicious but a story they do not make.

in any case I fully expect the next episode to be completely terrible. i was optimistic when I saw the first bits of the trailer because i like blue people. but if sim is showing up that probably means the whole thing is going to be sacrificed to the gods of the metanarrative like the monks episodes so really nothing to look forward to.